STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Have you ever thought, how, with a couple of extra bucks, your favorite borough park could become an even more pleasant place to be — maybe it would benefit from a skateboard area, a fountain, new benches or a playground upgrade?

And did you do a good job remembering to recycle your used paper products last year?

Indeed, the two ideas are related.

The Staten Island Paper Challenge wrapped up on the last day of 2011, and all the $60,000 promised to borough parks will soon be in the hands of local community boards: CB 1 has $29,000 with which to work, CB 2 $28,000 and CB 3 $3,000.

The unique contest, sponsored by the Travis-based Pratt Industries and co-sponsored by the Advance, gave cash awards to the Island’s community boards based on how much they upped recycling over the same quarter of the previous year.

“I like to think, in these hard economic times, with paper down citywide and the borough being up, these are results we’ll hang our hat on,” said Hank Levin, the city Sanitation Department’s contract manager for Pratt.

The borough increased recycling by 1.8 percent between 2010 and 2011, amounting to 503 more tons sent to Pratt rather than the landfill.

That’s enough to make 1.25 million pizza boxes.

Whether the challenge had an impact on the results is hard to say, Levin admitted, and it will not continue in 2012.

But Levin said there were many benefits to increasing awareness about paper recycling through the contest, which was tracked regularly in the pages of the Advance and boosted by the efforts of the Boy Scouts, Borough President James Molinaro and the community boards.

“We let the borough know a little more about recycling and hopefully people will pick up on that,” he said. “We have to keep being persistent educating the public and giving them resources and moving forward.”

Although Community Board 3 — which includes Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty’s residence — was the only area down for the year, the commissioner still had high praise for the program.

“Commissioner Doherty appreciates the commitment to recycling made by Pratt Industries in its Staten Island Paper Challenge,” said Sanitation spokesman Vito Turso. “The challenge has been met with increased recycling rates and local parks will soon be beautified thanks to Pratt’s dedication to ‘greening’ the Island.”

Where that “greening” will eventually be seen has yet to be decided, say community board members.

At Community Board 1, members have discussed such projects as turning a city-owned strip of land in Graniteville off Forest Avenue into a proper park, or making improvements to such favorite spots as Clove Lakes and Silver Lake Park, among other locations.

More concrete plans about where to dedicate the $29,000 will be discussed Tuesday night at 7 p.m., when the Public Service Committee convenes before the general meeting, said committee chairman Sunny Jain, urging all CB1 residents with input to attend.

“This is the future; this is good for everybody; we need to focus more and more of these things,” said Jain. “ This was a joint effort by everybody to continue to publicize and highlight the message of recycling for everybody.”